Murder by Acronym
by Ancalime8301
Summary: In which a name means something more.


Written for the LiveJournal community Watsons_Woes for their July Writing Prompts challenge. The prompt for day 9 was: _WWWWD?: Make up an acronym and use it in your story._

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_Murder by Acronym_

Holmes was called in after the third identical murder: all the victims were minor railroad office employees that suffered a single blow to the head and then the fatal slit across the throat. The bodies were stretched across the tracks just outside a railway station and found by those who were responsible for the first morning trains. On each body was a slip of paper with WELCH spelled out in letters cut from newspapers, and the bodies were discovered three days apart.

"I don't know what to make of it," Lestrade confessed, handing one of the WELCH papers to Holmes. "Welch isn't the name of any of the victims. We've begun looking for a Welch in the employees of the railways, but each murder has been on a different line and the victims aren't from the same company either."

Holmes made a noise of comprehension but didn't take his attention away from the paper, which he was examining with his convex lens. "I will need to look at the tracks," he said finally.

.

I went with Holmes to Euston station to examine where the body had been found. As always, Holmes seemed to see more than the rest of us combined, but I could immediately conclude that the man had been killed on the spot-there was blood spattered on one of the rails as well as on the ties between them.

"Your suspect is a laborer, so you can ignore all office employees," Holmes said finally. "He has likely worked as a fireman for one of the railways."

Lestrade and I both took notes as he spoke, but that was all he would divulge. As we returned to Baker Street, I asked why a fireman might be the suspect, but Holmes changed the subject. "What conclusion do you draw from the notes left on the bodies?"

"Notes? You mean the name Welch? Well, it would seem odd for the man to sign his crimes, but what else could it be?"

"What else indeed," Holmes mused, and spoke no more.

For the next two days Holmes worked on the railway murders puzzle. From the clouds of pipe smoke poisoning the atmosphere of our flat, he was no closer to a conclusion than when he'd begun. The newspaper accounts of the murders had been cut out and were lined up across the top of his desk. The note from each murder was laid beside the newspaper article, for Lestrade had brought the other two in case they had any additional clues that would help.

As the day drew to a close, I fretted that another body would be found come morning and I suspected the same anxiety was on Holmes' mind. I wandered past the clippings on his desk, pausing to consider the pasted letters. Holmes had already concluded which newspapers they had come from, but that information was of no assistance.

But for some reason, I could not help staring at them. Then I realized what seemed so odd. "Holmes, why are they all capital letters? Wouldn't it have been easier to use lowercase?"

Holmes was at my side in an instant. "But what could it stand for?" he muttered.

"Stand for?"

"There is no reason to use all capitals unless each letter is meant to stand for a separate word," Holmes said impatiently and he turned on his heel and began paging through his books. "But if WELCH stands for something, I believe it is a meaning concocted by our murderer."

"Might it be foreign?"

"A foreign phrase with the correct first letters to spell a common surname? Unlikely."

Holmes pondered this new wrinkle for quite a while, pacing the sitting room as he did so. Every so often he stopped to peruse the items on his desk, then resumed his circling.

During one pause, he uttered a cry of triumph. "Quickly, Watson, we must find Lestrade immediately."

.

The first three murders had occurred at the stations at Holburn, London Bridge, and Euston. Holmes insisted that WELCH stood for the stations at which a murder was to occur, which still left several possible stations for the W and C, but it narrowed the field considerably and meant that Lestrade could have men lying in wait for the suspect.

The man was caught at Waterloo in the wee hours of the morning. Holmes had been convinced he would appear at Charing Cross, so we were waiting there instead. Lestrade fetched us as soon as he heard the news (he had been at the Cannon Street station) and Holmes quickly deduced most of the man's story just by looking at him and the miserable wretch, named Harris, confessed the rest.

Harris had been the fireman for Welch the engineer, and somewhere along the way Welch had taken a disliking to him. Harris claimed that Welch blamed him for an accident that was not his doing and thus had gotten him fired and blacklisted from ever working as a fireman again. When Harris realized that he would never gain employment, he decided to take revenge on the office workers who denied him employment and do it in such a way that blame might fall on Welch. Thus, the name on each body.

"Even Lestrade is smarter than that," Holmes said to Harris, sounding disgusted. "Come, Watson. Our time would be better spent in our beds."


End file.
